New Philosophical Foundations for International Law: From an Order of Fear to One of Respect

The international legal order is dominated by a concern for security, whether national or individual, an explicit fear of the Other, towards whom one exists in no moral relation. This is not a recent phenomenon but goes back to the origin of modernity in a Hobbesian rejection of classical and medieval natural law. This fear is not marginal to liberalism; rather, the amorality vacuum affecting personal relations is integral to liberal contractarianism. This fear-inducing vacuum has to be countered through a phenomenology of the person in community, following Paul Ricouer, which restores the ethical dimension of society. At the same time, a critical phenomenology can expose the pathologies of fear, the use of force to dominate, and the consequences of the absence of respect. The whole subject-matter of international law is inherently vulnerable to these negative contradictions, and not just recent tragedies, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain. An exit strategy from a world of fear to one of respect has still to recognise the limits imposed not so much by the difference of the Other, as by the perplexity of one's own opaqueness. The destructiveness of fear remains at this initial stage. However, one can never completely overcome it by coming out of the modernity of the isolated self. We are equally opaque to one another.     

Canada

European Journal of Political Research -